


Bunker Down

by YogurtHoops



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Canon Compliant, Chapter 5: The Last Reel, Gen, Not Really Character Death, The deaths won't be too graphic but they're... definitely there so just be aware, Time Loop, henry wrote the invisible messages, is the groundhog day trope worse if you dont remember the previous loops?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24367756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YogurtHoops/pseuds/YogurtHoops
Summary: The first few times around, Alice doesn't give Henry the looking glass because there aren't any hidden messages to begin with.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	1. The First Go-Round

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of the dialogue is taken straight from the game, with a few exceptions due to time loop things and some scenes that aren't shown in canon. 
> 
> I have a lot of emotions over the implications of the invisible ink in Henry's cell.

“I know that song.” 

Henry couldn’t help saying so. Hearing her hum the Bendy jingle was a nice reprieve from the constant sounds of dripping ink and machinery. It was one of the first pieces Sammy presented to them, if he remembered correctly. 

“Everyone knows that song,” she says simply, tapping her brush on the side of the ink pot. Short, to the point. He slightly regrets bringing it up, if only so she would keep singing. Instead she turns slightly, scanning him from the corner of her eye. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

She asked those questions before, when he was still in the limbo between shock and grieving over Boris’s death. He hadn’t answered, curling up on the cot and facing the wall until the questions faded into whispers in the back of his mind. He can still hear the soft  _ tinks _ of metal hitting the handle of an axe, the…  _ other _ Boris’s chosen intimidation tactic. 

“I was invited by an old friend,” he offers now, apologetic. “And now I can’t leave.” 

The woman scoffs slightly, turning back to the painted wall. “Then you know more than we do.” 

Silence, only filled by the sound of wet bristles against old wallpaper. Henry takes the moment to sit back down on the cot, his back hitting the wall softly. The makeshift cage they had was made in advance, he noticed. Anything that was a bit more solid than ink couldn’t get out without brute strength, and even then the noises would lure his captors back. 

He thinks about how they were there just in time to save him, right when Susie was in the open and had no control over the situation. Was this cage meant for her?

“One minute,” the woman says, breaking through his thoughts. “We don’t even exist. Just… thoughts.” She paints a decisive line on the wall. “And the next minute, this place.”

Henry wonders if it would be easier to deal with if he never left the studio, all those years ago. If he was one of those ink creatures, forced to stay in a hell of his own making. Is being torn away from a good life better than never having that life to begin with? To be born here, and not even remember what it was like outside? 

_ Susie remembered _ , he thinks.  _ She remembered Sammy, Joey, and… me, and she chose to do the things she did. _ Maybe it didn’t matter where you came from – the studio will change you no matter what. 

“Are you gonna let me out of here?” He whispers.

She shoots him a glance. “Down here, strangers aren’t good things. How can we trust you?” He can see her grip tightening on the brush. “We don’t even know what you are–”

“My name is Henry,” he says quickly. 

_ No Henry, I know who you are! And I know why you’re here! _

_ That makes one of us, Susie.  _ “... I used to work here.” 

“I…” The woman sighs, defeated. “I honestly don’t know my name. So they call me Alice, but I’m  _ no _ angel.” 

Susie’s reputation preceded her, apparently. Henry wonders if she knew that – about the  _ No Angels Allowed _ plastered on the walls. She did mention wanting to be known again, to be popular and for everyone to know her name.  _ Is this what you wanted, Susie? Fear instead of love? _

“You go back and rest,” Alice says, stepping back from the wall and giving it a once-over. “We’ll talk again later.”

-000-

Tom is glaring at him again. 

There really isn’t much Henry can do about it. The soft  _ tink, tink, tink _ of the axe hitting the wolf’s robotic hand fills the area and makes it difficult to concentrate. It doesn’t help that Alice left a few hours ago for level six – something about a supply run. He has the nagging suspicion that  _ he _ is the one responsible for said supply run, since he unfortunately uses up precious resources. He’d make an argument to Alice that they should just let him go so he stops taking up space, but Tom might take that as permission to hunt him down for good. He is a wolf, after all. 

“Your arm is impressive,” Henry says from his position behind bars. Tom doesn’t give any sign that he heard him, so he just keeps on talking. If only to fill the silence. “It was from the animatronic, right? It was missing an arm when I was down there.”

Tom’s ear flicks. 

“I don’t remember Lacie,” he admits. Joey did… a lot after he left, it seems. An amusement park? He wasn’t around when Bertrum was designing the thing, much less when Lacie was  _ building _ it. “She sounded confident, though. I kept expecting the robot to come to life at the worst possible moment and try to kill me.” He smiles a bit. “I was surprised when it didn’t. I kinda wish that was what I had to fight instead of…” 

He cuts off that train of thought.  _ Don’t think about it. Not now. You can cry once you’re out of here.  _

“Is she still down here?” He whispers, half to himself. “Was she invited back by Joey too?” 

Tom growls. Henry stops talking, too busy thinking about how many people Joey brought back to die.

-000-

Alice gives him a stick of charcoal and clean paper. 

“It wasn’t hard to find, really, with this being an animation studio and all,” she says in a rush. “There’s plenty of high shelves that escaped the flooding, and the charcoal is more ink-infused than I’d like, but–”

“It’s perfect,” Henry says, grateful beyond words. “Thank you, I…” 

“You used to work here, right?” She lilts. “I saw you eyeing my paintbrush, earlier, so you had to be one of the animators that jumped ship back when the war started.” 

Henry was impressed. “How’d you know?”

“Because you’re not like us,” she says. “You were invited back. No one could have left after the ink machine was installed. I may not remember… anything, from back then, but there are these recordings…” 

“Thank you,” he says again, seeing a spark of sadness enter her eyes. “Not just for this.”

Alice winces. “You shouldn’t thank me. You’re in a cage.” 

“It’s safe in here, though. And you’re taking care of me.”

She blinks, at a loss for words. Then, she laughs. “You’re not a difficult man to take care of, Henry.” She nods towards the paper in his hands. “Instead of thanking me, maybe you could draw me something.”

“Any requests?”

“Hm, how about…” 

-000-

“You’re the one that writes on the walls.” Henry is amazed, if a little panicked. There were a  _ lot _ of writings in the studio, not all of them implying that the writer was… mentally stable.

“We all do.” Alice says, and his panic is reduced somewhat. “For some poor souls down here, it’s the only way they can be heard.” 

Henry is reminded of Boris’s ‘artwork’ on the wall of the safehouse. Tom hasn’t spoken at all in the time that he’s been here, either. Did either of them write to make up for their missing voices?

“But you don’t want to touch the ink for too long,” Alice continues, filling in a ‘P’ in the word ‘HOPE’ she was inking. “It can claim you. Pull you back.” 

_ It could have touched me. It could have pulled me back! _

“...That’s how I met Tom.”

Henry perks up. It was obvious Tom had an intense loyalty to the woman. How’d it start?

“I was messing with things I shouldn’t have been, and he…” she pauses. “He was there.”

That isn’t as detailed as Henry wanted, but he’ll take it. “Why do you call him ‘Tom’?”

“He just seems to respond to it.” She fills in a few lines over the ‘O’.  _ A halo _ . 

“Well,” Henry mumbles, failing to keep the frustration out of his voice. “I don’t think he’s very fond of me.”

Alice snorts. “He’s protective.”

“Like I can do anything to hurt anyone when he carries that axe of his around like a third arm.”

“You made it far enough down to get to us,” she points out, tapping the side of the paint pot. “You’re not completely incompetent.” 

_ It doesn’t feel like it _ , he doesn’t say, leaning back onto his cot. He couldn’t save Boris – that feeling of helplessness, uselessness… 

They lapse into silence, only the sounds of the brush being dipped in ink interrupting the quiet. 

-000-

In the end, Alice and Tom aren’t… friendly, but they’re kind. Alice keeps conversations short and simple, teasing him of a personality he barely remembers but definitely recognizes in a distant sort of way. She doesn’t trust him, though – he wouldn’t either, in their shoes. Nothing is safe down here, and he is a stranger. 

Tom keeps his distance, and a small part of him always hurts seeing Boris’s face so  _ angry _ . He drew his Boris once on the paper Alice had gifted him, with little crossed out eyes in a moment of grief, and Tom’s reaction was… not great. 

He isn’t a friend here, only a prisoner. 

It’s probably why he wakes up to a quiet safehouse, something wet dripping onto his face. He absentmindedly wipes it off, half asleep, and freezes when his hand touches cold. 

_ Ink. _

He jolts up. The walls are covered with black, oozing through the boards and wallpaper like– 

The wall Alice was drawing on, with battle plans and ‘HOPE’ painted with emotion, warps. 

“Alice?” He says, heartbeat quickening. His eyes dart to the door – it’s open. Alice and Tom must have jumped ship long ago. Leaving him. 

_ Was I bait?  _ He thinks. He can hardly hear his own thoughts over the blood rushing in his ears as the ink demon’s hand pushes through the wall like it’s nothing but liquid.  _ Was I only here to give them a heads start? _

The head pushes through next, and Henry feels… strangely calm. No anger at the others for leaving him, no terror – although his body is rushing with adrenaline. He just feels calm. 

The calm shatters when Bendy smashes through the planks of his prison with no effort, and an enlarged hand grips his neck and  _ squeezes _ . 

-000-

_ That wasn’t a very hopeful ending, was it, Henry? I’m sorry about that. Something must have gone wrong in the storyboarding process. A misplaced line, maybe? I’ll look into it, but maybe it was a one-off mistake. Once more, Henry. With feeling! _

_ Come down to the old workshop. There’s something I want to show you. _

  
  



	2. Long-Forgotten Self

_ DREAMS COME TRUE _ is written on the wall in black ink. 

Henry really isn’t sure how to feel about that.

Then again, he isn’t sure how to feel about  _ any  _ of this. Joey reaching out after years of radio silence, the expanded work areas, the utter silence – everything is just a bit west of weird. It’s almost as if he’s dreaming of a make-believe studio, his brain filling in some of the blanks in his memory with rooms that make sense, but never actually existed. 

The Ink Machine though… even his subconscious could never make  _ that _ monstrosity up. Just looking in the power room makes his head pound, and that’s not even mentioning the damn thing rising from the pit with all the dramatics that one could expect from his old coworker. Jesus, Joey. 

“Alright,” he says to himself. “How do I get this to work?” The pillars around the room, as macabre as they look, are definitely plugged into the walls despite having no visible purpose. Again, Joey with the dramatics. His assumptions are only confirmed when he finds Wally Frank’s tape in the corridor. 

“ _ Also, get this, Joey had each of us donate something from our work station _ ,” Wally’s voice crackles from the little speaker. “ _ We put them on these little pedestals in the break room. To help appease the gods, Joey says. Keep things going. I think he’s lost his mind, but, hey, he writes the checks. _ ”

Henry can’t help but agree. Wally was always a smart man, smarter than anyone really gave him credit for. Hearing his voice really brings him back to nostalgic times. What was the janitor doing nowadays?

“ _ But I tell you what, if one more of these pipes burst, I’m outta here.” _

_ I really hope you did get out of here, Wally _ , Henry thinks, heart dropping at the sight of Boris, ribs torn open on an operating table. Out loud, he can barely hear himself speak. “Oh my God…”

“Joey, what were you doing?”

-000-

The more tapes he listens to, the worse the feeling in his gut becomes. Sammy, Susie, Norman, Wally, airing out their thoughts to little recorders because it was the only way to be truly listened to – Joey certainly wouldn’t lend an ear to their problems, not if what everyone was saying had any merit. He must have gone completely off the deep end without someone to keep him in check. A pump switch in Sammy’s office? Really? Joey should have known Sammy needed his absolute uninterrupted attention on his work – he was high maintenance, yes, but he was also the head of the department for a reason. Sammy’s work was the best Henry had ever heard. 

And… the Alice situation. He listened to Susie’s tape with a mixture of fear and pity. Henry left long before she was replaced, but word definitely got around when Susie disappeared shortly after the cast change. 

He has the sneaking suspicion that Joey was involved somehow, hitting an ink monster with his axe. It dissolves into the ground of the orchestra pit as he blinks the ink out of his eyes, readying himself for the next one. He really shouldn’t let his mind wander in such a deadly situation, but his movements feel like muscle memory – he’d never touched an axe in his life, and yet carrying it felt so… right. 

_ With how intent Joey seemed on the whole ritual thing for starting the Ink Machine, I wouldn’t be surprised if Susie was a sacrifice, _ he thinks.  _ And, well, Bendy was a demon after all. Rituals fell under the umbrella. _

Henry withholds a shiver as he smacks a monster into the wall with the flat end of the axe with a  _ splat _ . He doesn’t like thinking about his old coworker like that, but with Boris dead upstairs and from what he knows of the man when they were working… it’s not hard to imagine. 

He pauses in his swinging when he realizes there aren’t any more ink monsters and slumps down on one of the orchestra chairs, breathing heavily. They just… came out of nowhere, and there were so many when he came out of Sammy’s sanctuary.  _ That _ was new too, the garage door in the recording studio. How exactly did Sammy rig it up to open when certain instruments were played? 

He doesn’t see the masked figure on the balcony when he steps out of the recording studio, too lost in memories as he makes his way to Sammy’s office to throw the ink pump switch. 

-000-

Henry’s slightly concussed when he has the thought, looking at the tape player in front of Alice’s –  _ Susie’s –  _ lair. 

_ These kinds of cassette players weren’t made until the 1970s.  _

And then.

_ It’s… the 1970s  _ now _.  _

His math is rushed and his head hurts like a bitch, but it’s been thirty years since he worked at the studio, right? Thomas Connor’s complaining about the elevator muddles his mind slightly as he picks up the little machine, whirring away. It certainly  _ looks _ old, like it was stuck down here for years. He turns it around, looking for a serial code, a company, a phone number,  _ anything _ . Anything to explain what his old coworkers were doing recording little diaries into machines that had no business existing for years after the studio fell into disrepair. 

_ Joey Drew Studios _ , the back says merrily, and Henry just sighs, placing it back on the shelf. Sounds about right. 

-000-

_ A little… firepower _ .

Susie can really be a bitch if she wants to, but  _ hell _ if picking up that tommy gun isn’t the most euphoria-inducing feeling he’s ever had since entering the studio. His hands glide over it almost reverently, almost afraid that it’ll melt in his hands. Boris gives him a thumbs up when he enters the elevator with it, and he can’t help but smile back, even with Susie’s voice creepily tittering over the speakers. He feels  _ powerful _ , like he’s no longer the weakest thing in the building anymore. 

The feeling is quickly dashed when Alice introduces the ‘projectionist’. 

_ Norman _ , he internally despairs.  _ What did they do to you? _ Because that is Norman Polk, no question. He was the only projectionist in the studio, and a damn good one too. The gun in Henry’s hands no longer feels like a security blanket – no, instead it feels like an execution device. He  _ knew _ Norman. He can’t just  _ shoot _ him to death.

_ Then again _ , he thinks, squinting from his position next to the elevator.  _ It might be a mercy, at this point. _ Having a projector as a head couldn’t be comfortable. And, well, it’s self defence, right? The butcher gang member next to the elevator shaft looked like its neck was snapped, and it wasn’t Susie’s doing. Not with the heart still in its hands. 

_ I’m really trying to justify killing an old friend _ . He sighs, inching his way down the stairs and into the ink puddle. Maybe he’ll be able to avoid Norman entirely by sneaking around. Or maybe there are hearts on the other side of the room, where Norman isn’t patrolling. 

There aren’t any hearts – just an ink pipe with a valve that he turns halfheartedly, hoping that it’ll drain this level. It… doesn’t do anything, so Henry takes a deep breath, and heads in the direction of the giant Bendy statue.

The maze is terrifying, filled with Little Miracle Stations like it  _ knew  _ Henry was going to need them. The corpses of Butcher Gang copies litter the halls, holding the ink hearts in their hands. He doesn’t want to think about how they got there, why their necks are so twisted that their heads loll in unnatural positions or where their missing limbs may have gone. He gets the hearts, and gets out of there. 

Norman only sees him once, but he’s in a Miracle Station the second his light comes around the corner and passes by. It gives him a perfect position to see the speakers and wiring coming out of the projectionist up close and personal. 

“Let’s go, Boris,” he says once he gets back to the elevator, shuddering. His friend pats him on the back, which is appreciated. On the way up, he entertains the idea of shooting Bendy with the tommy gun, if only because he wasn’t able to shoot anything down on level fourteen. 

It probably wouldn’t do anything, but it’s a nice thought. 

-000-

_ “Joey is a man of ideas… and only ideas.” _

_ That’s my voice _ , Henry thinks. He’s leaning heavily on an ink-stained table in a room that used to be flooded. Why wasn’t it flooded anymore? Why was  _ this _ here?  _ I don’t remember recording this _ .

It’s definitely him, though. Those are Henry’s thoughts, Henry’s voice.  _ Two weeks into working with Joey. _

“ _ On the plus side, I’ve got a new character I think people are going to love.” _

_ When did I record this? _

-000-

“If anyone finds this,” he says softly into the busted cassette player. “My name is Henry, and I’ve been trapped far below Joey Drew Studios. A man I used to work for.” He tacks on that last part with no small amount of exhaustion – because that’s all Henry is, isn’t it? A man that used to work for Joey Drew.

The Alice and… the Boris, seem to think otherwise. They don’t know what to make of him. Apparently, he’s nothing like anything they’ve ever seen in the studio before. 

“There are crazy things after me down here,” he continues. “Monsters. Demons. Angels. And right now two of them are holding me prisoner. I don’t know how to get out of here, but there’s more.” 

The tape in the flooded room with his voice. Susie knowing why he was here despite even  _ Henry _ not knowing himself. 

“There’s… a hidden secret, hiding in the shadows.” He cringes, knowing how vague and needlessly dramatic it sounds, but he has no idea how else to put it. “I just… felt like I’m being watched.” Well, of course he’s being watched. The Bendy cutouts… “There’s something more in here,” he says, a bit more urgently. “If anyone finds this, you must not–”

Noises sound from behind the bunker door, and he freezes. “Hold on. They’re coming back.” He switches the cassette player off, shoving it under the cot just as the Boris pokes his head through the door. His eyes narrow when he sees Henry, but once he finds him secure in his cell, he enters all the way. Henry’s eyes catch on the robotic arm as it grips the wolf’s axe. Is that… the missing arm from the Bendy animatronic?

Boris growls when he catches him looking, and Henry quickly turns his head. 

-000-

Henry wakes up to a quiet safehouse, something wet dripping onto his face. He absentmindedly wipes it off, half asleep, and freezes when his hand touches cold. 

_ Ink. _

He jolts up. The walls are covered with black, oozing through the boards and wallpaper. 

_ Why is this… So familiar? _

He can’t find the time to be terrified out of his mind, not with how hard deja vu is hitting him. The edges of his vision grow shaky, almost saturated as a hand pushes through the wall opposite his cell, followed by a head and the rest of the demon’s body. It destroys the planks over the doorway with ease. 

_ This…  _ he thinks, with a sudden, unrestrained clarity.  _ This has happened before _ . 

His vision stabilizes just as Bendy stands before him, towering over his sitting form. Bendy’s body looks… painful. Its leg is backwards, its arms malformed and thin. It leans down, and he can feel cold breath coming out from between its teeth.  _ It strangles me, now _ , he thinks.  _ It strangles me, and I die. _

Bendy grabs Henry’s head gently instead, twisting sharply to the side and snapping his neck.

-000-

Henry steps through the entrance of the old studio and gets a sudden feeling of unease. Nothing too bad – just a bad chill down his back. The feeling that he shouldn’t be here, like it was a condemned building set for demolition in a few minutes and he was trapped inside with no one to hear his cries for help. 

_ That’s slightly melodramatic, _ he thinks, huffing out a laugh. The feeling doesn’t go away, though. 

It stays when he lifts the ink machine out of the pit.

It stays when he falls through the floorboards to the Music Department.

It’s  _ magnified _ when the ink demon emerges from the ink pool, right in front of the exit.  _ Is Henry even meant to leave? _

And, finally, it sharpens when he turns the lights on in Boris’s safehouse bathroom. The mirror flashes for a second – just a moment, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. It takes some positioning, kneeling on the ground and asking Boris to flicker the lights as fast as he can, but he makes out a message in the glass. A  _ hidden _ message. 

_ WHO AM I NOW? _

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm reviewing a lot of Adobe-Outdesign's old batim theories to help get in the zone for writing this thing, so credit where credit is due. Mad respect for someone who predicted the end of the game months before it actually happened.


End file.
